Hello, Zebra! Hello, Oreo!

I can't sleep so I just gave myself a manicure and painted my fingernails black.

I'm tempted to add white zig zag stripes as a homage to the days when mean kids called me "zebra".

Then again, if I only do one white stripe down the middle I could embody the moments they called me "Oreo".

The funny thing about being called an Oreo, especially in second or third grade, was that I didn't exactly know what an Oreo was. My mom believed in healthy eating so anything with sugar in it, including Oreos, never darkened our door.

When I did find out what an Oreo was, I didn't see what was so bad about being called one since I thought they tasted pretty good. I remember one girl finally breaking it down to me at recess, explaining that I was black on the outside but white on the inside. The creamy white filling that was, to my palate, the best part of an Oreo cookie was, to her and so many others, the worst thing about me. I was often treated me as if I'd come to school looking like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

Sticks and stones can break my bones, and names can hurt. Almost 30 years later and I still remember, even when I'm doing something as inane as painting my nails black.

I always wonder... What ended up happening to those kids that used to call me those names? Do they remember doing so? And gosh, I wonder if any of them ended up in interracial relationships or with children that could be called Oreos or zebras?

How prevalent today is this sort of teasing for school kids who are mixed/biracial?